Science and Exploration

[Midnight]

Poor little bees

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/10320122

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-pompei...130608439.html

The mystery of Pompeii's trashy tombs explained.

[SoNotHer]

Scientists Look to European Bats for Answers on White Nose Fungus in U.S.

By Rachel Bogart

According to the Associated Press, Craig Willis, a biologist from the University of Winnipeg, is looking for a solution to control white nose fungus, a disease that is killing bats in several U.S. states, by studying a similar fungus in European bats. Numerous bats in Europe have survived the fungus and scientists believe white nose fungus spread to the U.S. from Europe. Willis' research has focused around finding this link and proving that the fungus is an invasive species. This would ultimately lead to scientists researching why the fungus has been so fatal in the U.S. and help scientists manage the disease. Here are some facts about white nose fungus and how its impacted bats in the country:

* The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that white nose fungus, also known as white nose syndrome, was first found in February 2006 in a cave about 40 miles of Albany, N.Y.

* As of October 2010, white nose syndrome has been confirmed in New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Maryland, as well as several areas in Canada.

* Government agencies have continued to close off caves to the public in hopes of quarantining the disease while scientists try to find out more about the spread of the problem, according to Wired.

* By declaring the fungus an invasive species, wildlife agencies would have increased access to funds in order to fight it.

* Since March of 2008, scientists estimate that more than one million bats have died from the disease, with a majority being little brown bats, according to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center.

* Infected bats can be identified by having white fungal growth on their muzzles and or wing tissue, though infected bats don't always have these symptoms, in addition to displaying abnormal behavior.

* An article from ABC News noted that the abnormal behavior associated with white nose syndrome is what kills the bats, specifically causing them to end their hibernation early and starving to death in winter.

* In some areas hit by the disease, the mortality rate of infected bats is as high as 90 percent.

* Bats are especially susceptible to white nose syndrome during hibernation since bats congregate in large numbers in caves, reported the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

* Indiana bats are likely the most vulnerable it's a state and federally endangered species with 50 percent of the bats hibernating in a former mine that has been confirmed as having white nose syndrome.



[IMG][/IMG]

[Midnight]

Wonder if its like when "civilized" nations went to new countries and killed off the indiginous population with TB, small pox etc.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/complete-civil...004714070.html


Hunley

I just want to know how 7 people got into that thing...

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/researchers-tr...160144542.html

I would rather the remains go to the tribes than remain with researchers.

[SoNotHer]

Carefully.... ;+)

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://news.yahoo.com/complete-civil...004714070.html


Hunley

I just want to know how 7 people got into that thing...

[mariamma]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-...dimension.html

A bit over my head. Maybe y'all can understand it.

[Corkey]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti....html?ITO=1490


New 1,100 y/o tomb in Egypt.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/science-...-27916671.html

This is just cool, so enjoy!

[SoNotHer]

Absolutely gorgeous...

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://news.yahoo.com/video/science-...-27916671.html

This is just cool, so enjoy!

[SoNotHer]

Latest ScienceCast from NASA exploring the snow drought (despite evidence to the contrary this weekend) and describing the effects of La Nina and the Arctic Oscillation:

[Softhearted]

"Fossils of ancient sea creature discovered
Toronto researchers make 500-million-year-old find in Tulip Beds in Canadian Rockies"

source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/st...-creature.html

[Softhearted]

"Dirty dancing: dung beetles get down to walk the line
The meticulous insects pirouette atop their dung balls to get their bearings and correct navigational errors."

source:http://www.nature.com/news/dirty-dan...he-line-1.9868

[Softhearted]

"Aye-aye lemur 'heats up' its special foraging finger
By Ella Davies
Reporter, BBC Nature"

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16577537

[SoNotHer]

How The Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 Is Going to Affect You

By Jesus Diaz
Jan 23, 2012 8:42 PM



There's a solar Coronal Mass Ejection travelling towards us at 1,400 miles per second, the largest solar storm since 2005. It will hit Earth around 9am Eastern Time, causing fluctuations on the power grid and disruptions to the Global Positioning System.

Don't worry, you won't die.

But there's something else, a strong proton storm—ranking S3 on a 5-level scale—which is in full rage now and gradually increasing. While CMEs are normal—about 2,000 every 11-year solar cycle—proton storms are very rare. Only a couple of dozen happen per solar cycle. And this one can be dangerous.

The storm has already affected aircraft traffic and may affect satellites' computers. On a telephone interview, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center physicist Doug Biesecker told me that, fortunately, there are measures to avoid most dangers.

"Many airliners have been avoiding the North Pole routes because they are more exposed to the proton storm, which disrupts High Frequency radio communications," he said on a telephone interview. HF datalinks are crucial to modern airflight, as they keep aircraft connected to Air Traffic Control. Due to the structure of the magnetic field that surrounds Earth, the polar cusps have very little protection against outbursts of solar radiation, so any airplane crossing that area could be exposed to this mayhem.
We're experiencing technical difficulties

He also said that satellites may be affected, causing reboots on onboard computers as well as noise in imaging systems and interferences in telemetry caused by something called single event offsets. These events may change the values of the telemetry data. Since we are aware of these interferences in advance, engineers on ground bases can take them into account and make corrections before firing any commands that may jeopardize the life of the spacecraft.

The only real unpredictable danger is a total hardware failure, with a proton hitting an electronic component and killing it. But according to Biesecker, this "is a very remote possibility."

Global positioning systems are also affected—and will be even more affected tomorrow. Regular humans will not notice this. You will be able to keep using your GPS normally, but people using high precision GPS equipments—like oil drilling, military, engineering and mining operations—will definitely notice the problems.

According to Karen Fox at NASA Goddard Space Center, "NASA alerted operators of their satellites that the CME was coming, so those operators can take whatever shielding precautions they can."

The biological danger

NOAA's scale says that an S3 proton storm may pose danger to passengers in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes, which is why some airplanes below the 65th parallel north are now actually flying at lower altitudes to avoid any kind of radiation nastiness.

They also recommend for astronauts to stay home and avoid space walks but—according to Biesecker—this type of storm is "far below the level needed for the ISS to take any extraordinary protection measures." If it's ok for them, you can be sure it's perfectly fine for you and me down here on good old planet Earth.
What will happen when the CME hits tomorrow morning?

When the Coronal Mass Ejection arrives to Earth at 1,400 miles per second, we will have a geomagnetic storm and a radio blackout. This, apart from the possibility of awesome auroras at latitudes as low as New York, means several things.

How The Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 Is Going to Affect YouFirst, the radio blackout will be level R2, which is moderate. According to the NOAA scale, it will cause "limited blackout of HF radio communication on the sunlit side and loss of radio contact for tens of minutes," as well as "degradation of low-frequency navigation signals for tens of minutes." Nothing that you should worry about.

The geomagnetic storm will only be "strong G2 with possibilities of G3," according to Bisecker. In the best case scenario, only power lines will be affected. You will not notice it because any power fluctuations will be handled by companies at the grid level. If the storm is long enough, however, it may damage power grid transformers.

Other than all this, and unless something extraordinary happens, you shouldn't worry about the world ending tomorrow. It won't. But keep your eyes open for auroras happening near you. Those living up north in particular will have a great show today and tomorrow.

[SoNotHer]

Snowy owls soar south from Arctic in rare mass migration
By Laura Zuckerman | Reuters – 5 hrs ago



A snowy white owl takes flight in this undated handout photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable."

Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts. A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions.

"What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana. "This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.

Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.

An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said. Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal.

Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said. The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests.

"For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington. But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites -- including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin -- suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes.

He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on. This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature.

"There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.

[SoNotHer]

Non-native Burmese pythons are the likely cause of a staggering mammal decline in Florida's Everglades.



In PNAS journal, they report that observations of some mammal species have declined by more than 99%. A team studied road surveys of mammals in the Everglades National Park before and after pythons became common. Researchers found a strong link between the spread of pythons and drops in recorded sightings of racoons, rabbits, bobcats and other species. “They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there.” The national park covers the southern 25% of the original Everglades - a region of subtropical wetlands that has been drained over the last century to reclaim it for human use. The origins of Burmese pythons in south Florida are unknown, but many were imported into the US through the pet trade. As the pythons have made it from captivity into the wild, the absence of natural predators has allowed populations to balloon. Intermittent sightings were recorded for 20 years before the snakes were recognised as being established across the Everglades in 2000.

The pythons are now established across thousands of sq km in southern Florida. Although there are no accurate figures for how many there are, the numbers removed from the Everglades reached nearly 400 in 2009 and this has been increasing year-on-year (apart from a slight drop in 2010 due to a cold spell).


"Any snake population - you are only seeing a small fraction of the numbers that are actually out there," said Prof Michael Dorcas, one of the study's authors, from Davidson College in North Carolina. He told BBC News: "They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there."

"We have documented pythons eating alligators, we have also documented alligators eating pythons. It depends on who is biggest during the encounter."
Earlier this month, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the US was poised to approve a ban on importing Burmese pythons. But some observers remarked that the move was about 30 years too late. Prof Dorcas and his colleagues looked at data on mammals found during roadkill surveys from 1993-1999, and on live and dead mammals encountered during nighttime road surveys from 1996-1997. They then compared these results with similar data collected between 2003 and 2011, after the pythons were recognised as being established.




They found that observations of raccoons and opossums had dropped by about 99%. There had been a 94.1% fall in observations of white-tailed deer and an 87.5% decrease in sightings of bobcats. No rabbits or foxes were seen during the more recent survey; rabbits were among the most common mammals in the roadkill survey between 1993 and 1999.

Getting ambushed?

The majority of these species have been documented in the diet of pythons found in the Everglades National Park. Indeed, raccoons and oppossums often forage at the water's edge, where they are vulnerable to ambush by pythons. Observations of rodents, coyotes and Florida panthers had increased slightly, but the overall number of sightings remained low.



The researchers also found that the declines in mammals coincided geographically with the spread of Burmese pythons. Mammal species are more common in areas where pythons have only been recently introduced, and are most abundant outside the snakes' current range. Bill Nelson, with 17-foot python skin US Senate Bill Nelson holds up the 5m-long skin of a Burmese python at a hearing on Capitol Hill in July 2009

Prof Dorcas said more research was needed to assess the impact of such large declines. But he added: "It's not unreasonable to assume that any time we have major declines in mammals like this it's going to have overall impacts on the ecosystem. Exactly what those are going to be, we don't know. But it's possible they could be fairly profound." The ban on importing Burmese pythons has come after five years of debate and lobbying in Washington DC. Florida's Democrat Senator Bill Nelson was among those who campaigned for a ban, unravelling the skin of a 5m-long Everglades python at a 2009 Senate hearing to make his point.

But reptile breeders and collectors had disputed that the tropical snakes posed much risk beyond south Florida and argued that any ban would harm a multi-million dollar industry. Although the ban will not reverse the situation in southern Florida, where the reptiles are already established, Prof Dorcas said it could help prevent their spread to other suitable habitats in the US, such as southern Louisiana and south Texas.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16791094

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-puz...231423099.html

Interstellar gasses puzzle scientists.

[Sachita]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

Non-native Burmese pythons are the likely cause of a staggering mammal decline in Florida's Everglades.



In PNAS journal, they report that observations of some mammal species have declined by more than 99%. A team studied road surveys of mammals in the Everglades National Park before and after pythons became common. Researchers found a strong link between the spread of pythons and drops in recorded sightings of racoons, rabbits, bobcats and other species. “They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there.” The national park covers the southern 25% of the original Everglades - a region of subtropical wetlands that has been drained over the last century to reclaim it for human use. The origins of Burmese pythons in south Florida are unknown, but many were imported into the US through the pet trade. As the pythons have made it from captivity into the wild, the absence of natural predators has allowed populations to balloon. Intermittent sightings were recorded for 20 years before the snakes were recognised as being established across the Everglades in 2000.

The pythons are now established across thousands of sq km in southern Florida. Although there are no accurate figures for how many there are, the numbers removed from the Everglades reached nearly 400 in 2009 and this has been increasing year-on-year (apart from a slight drop in 2010 due to a cold spell).


"Any snake population - you are only seeing a small fraction of the numbers that are actually out there," said Prof Michael Dorcas, one of the study's authors, from Davidson College in North Carolina. He told BBC News: "They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there."

"We have documented pythons eating alligators, we have also documented alligators eating pythons. It depends on who is biggest during the encounter."
Earlier this month, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the US was poised to approve a ban on importing Burmese pythons. But some observers remarked that the move was about 30 years too late. Prof Dorcas and his colleagues looked at data on mammals found during roadkill surveys from 1993-1999, and on live and dead mammals encountered during nighttime road surveys from 1996-1997. They then compared these results with similar data collected between 2003 and 2011, after the pythons were recognised as being established.




They found that observations of raccoons and opossums had dropped by about 99%. There had been a 94.1% fall in observations of white-tailed deer and an 87.5% decrease in sightings of bobcats. No rabbits or foxes were seen during the more recent survey; rabbits were among the most common mammals in the roadkill survey between 1993 and 1999.

Getting ambushed?

The majority of these species have been documented in the diet of pythons found in the Everglades National Park. Indeed, raccoons and oppossums often forage at the water's edge, where they are vulnerable to ambush by pythons. Observations of rodents, coyotes and Florida panthers had increased slightly, but the overall number of sightings remained low.



The researchers also found that the declines in mammals coincided geographically with the spread of Burmese pythons. Mammal species are more common in areas where pythons have only been recently introduced, and are most abundant outside the snakes' current range. Bill Nelson, with 17-foot python skin US Senate Bill Nelson holds up the 5m-long skin of a Burmese python at a hearing on Capitol Hill in July 2009

Prof Dorcas said more research was needed to assess the impact of such large declines. But he added: "It's not unreasonable to assume that any time we have major declines in mammals like this it's going to have overall impacts on the ecosystem. Exactly what those are going to be, we don't know. But it's possible they could be fairly profound." The ban on importing Burmese pythons has come after five years of debate and lobbying in Washington DC. Florida's Democrat Senator Bill Nelson was among those who campaigned for a ban, unravelling the skin of a 5m-long Everglades python at a 2009 Senate hearing to make his point.

But reptile breeders and collectors had disputed that the tropical snakes posed much risk beyond south Florida and argued that any ban would harm a multi-million dollar industry. Although the ban will not reverse the situation in southern Florida, where the reptiles are already established, Prof Dorcas said it could help prevent their spread to other suitable habitats in the US, such as southern Louisiana and south Texas.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16791094

When I lived in the Everglades I use to go out to the Indian Reservation where they have Billi Swamp Safari. I had friends that worked there. One day they get a call to pick up a python in the backyard of a home in Fort Lauderdale. This was in the suburbs. The snake was as big as the one in the pic above. In fact people in the neighbor complained about missing cats and dogs. They thought someone was stealing them. Can you imagine walking out into your back yard and seeing that?

They brought him back to the safari and fed him whole chickens